Curiosity Shop: Payment via Moneto

No, it’s not a new superhero equipped with endless amounts of cash. No, and it’s not a Magento solution for banks. Rather, Moneto is a payment service that uses a combination of NFC technology and MasterCard’s PayPass and is until now only available in the States.

The idea: If you have a mobile phone that has no inbuilt NFS capabilities – which still applies to most mobile phones these days – there is now a way of refitting them to prepare them for the joys of Near Field Communiation. By means of a microSD card that is put into your run-of-the-mill Android device or a special case for the iPhone (which hasn’t got an SD slot) you can pay with a special, prepaid credit card and the Moneto app like you would with an NFC-equipped device.

As interesting as the company’s business case sounds because they are entering the mobile payment market at an early stage, I’m a bit doubtful what will happen with Moneto when eg. Apple decides to stick an NFC chip into his next generation iPhone and provide users with a native solution.